University of Tasmania, Australia

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Robert Clarke

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Dr Robert Clarke

Lecturer

"BA (UQ), BA (Hons., Psych., Flinders), MA (CQU), PhD (UQ), Grad Cert University Teaching and Learning (UTAS)"

Anon

Contact Details

Contact Campus Newnham Campus
Building Arts Building
Room Reference L215
Telephone +61 3 6324 3032
Fax +61 3 6324 3652
Email Robert.Clarke@utas.edu.au

General Responsibilities

Robert teaches in the English program and is based at the Launceston campus. He currently convenes and teaches units on Australian and Modernist literature. He also coordinates HEA376 "Research Project", and contributes to the first year English units.

From 2005 to 2007 Robert lectured in literature and Australian Studies in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. In 2007, he taught units in academic writing and critical reading skills, and Australian studies, in the Faculty of Policy Studies at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan.

Teaching Responsibilities

Robert has convened and taught in to units on Australian literature, Australian Pop Culture and Cultural Studies, British Modernism, introductory literary studies, postgraduate research methods, academic writing and critical reading.

Robert has supervised honours research students on theses examining the works of writers such as John le Carre, Helen Garner, Don de Lillo. He is currently supervising a project in the Culture, Environment and Heritage program on the visitor books of the Waldheim chalet, Cradle Mountain; a creative writing project on the experience and expression of grief; a creative nonfiction writing project on the convictism and sexuality; and a masters project on the travel writing of Australian author Robert Dessaix.

Units

Publications

Books
  • Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Representation and Power in (Post)Colonial Cultures.  Ed. Robert Clarke. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, In Preparation).
  • Contemporary Travel Writing and Australian Aboriginality. (In Preparation).
Book Chapters
  • "The Idea of Celebrity Colonialism." Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Representation and Power in (Post)Colonial Cultures. Ed. Robert Clarke. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (In Preparation).
  •  "Reconciling Strangers: White Australian Travel Narratives and the Semiotics of Empathy." Excursions: New Directions in Travel Writing Studies. Ed. Paul Smethurst and Julia Kuehn. New York: Routledge, 2009. 167-79.
  • "Distant Cousins and Ordinary Australians: Encounters with Aboriginality in the 1990s."  Text, Travelling, Text.  Ed. Rimli Bhattacharya. New Dehli.  Department of English, University of Dehli, 2004. 115-34.
  • "Developing Cultural Citizens through Australia's Young Artists Mentoring Program" in Global Perspectives on Mentoring:  Transforming Contexts, Communities, and Cultures.  Ed. Frances K. Kochan and Joseph T. Pascarelli.Greenwich:  Information Age Publishing, 2004.  (with Dr Mary Ann Hunter).  53-72.
  • "Australia's Sublime Desert: John McDouall Stuart and Bruce Chatwin." In Transit: Travel, Text, Empire.  Ed. Helen Gilbert and Anna Johnston New York: Peter Lang, 2002. 149-72.
Journal Articles
  • "Travel and Celebrity Culture."  Postcolonial Studies 12.2 (2009): In Press.
  • "Star Traveller: Celebrity, Aboriginality, and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987)." Postcolonial Studies 12.2 (2009): In Press.
  • "Digital Storytelling in Australia: Academic Perspectives" (With Dr Andrea Adam) (In review).
  • "An Ordinary Place: Aboriginality and 'Ordinary' Australia in Travel Writing of the 1990s.". (In review)
  • "'New Age Trippers': Aboriginality and New Age Australian Travel Books" Studies in Travel Writing, 13.1 (2009): 25-41.
  • "Intimate Strangers: Contemporary Australian Travel Writing, the Semiotics of Empathy, and the Therapeutics of Race." Journal of Australian Studies 85 (2005): 69-81.
  • "Intimate Strangers: Contemporary Australian Travel Writing, the Semiotics of Empathy, and the Therapeutics of Race." Crossings 9.3 (2004) http://www.inasa-home.net/
  • "Travel Writing and Globalization." Writing Queensland, June (2001): 6-7.
  • "Globalization: Rupturing Totalized Analysis: Review of Frederic Jameson and Masao Miyoshi (eds). The Cultures of Globalization." Jouvert, 5 (3), 2001, http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v5i3/clarke.htm
Special Issues
  • "Travel and Celebrity Culture."  Postcolonial Studies 12.2 (2009) (In Preparation).
Selected Reviews
Research

Robert's research interests include travel writing with a particular focus on contemporary Australian travel writing. He is also interested in literary celebrity, the literature of reconciliation, contemporary Australian fiction and literary culture, amongst other things. He is currently editing two collections of academic essays. 'Travel and Celebrity Culture' will be published as a special issue of the journal Postcolonial Studies. Celebrity Colonialism: Fame. Representation and Power in (Post)Colonial Cultures will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. He is also an Honorary Research Consultant to the Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland.

Robert is interested in the pedagogy of literary studies and, in particular, the application of digital technologies to the literary studies classroom. He has co-authored a paper with Dr Andrea Adam (CALT, UTas) entitled "Digital Storytelling in Australia: Academic Perspectives."

Robert has experience as a social researcher having managed a national research project on the measurement of outcomes in mental health, and has researched and published in the area of mentorship in the arts and the effective evaluation and reporting of government funded arts projects.

Research Project/s